Human beings are motivated to maintain their safety and security. This research investigates whether people who are concerned with safety and security are likely to use and respond to stereotypes implying danger or threat. According to the investigators, individuals who are motivated to maintain safety and security (i.e., those operating under what is termed a "prevention focus") process negative or threatening information differently from benign or positive information. These types of people are expected to seek out and pay more attention to stereotypical information implying danger and show greater automatic endorsement of stereotypes implying threat. These effects are expected to emerge when threat is perceived to be psychologically proximate (close in time or in location) rather than distant. Stereotypes that are seen as particularly threatening because they are psychologically close are expected to exert a strong influence on judgments and behavior of individuals concerned with safety. Interestingly, stereotypes that are unrelated to their primary concern (i.e., safety) are expected to be utilized less compared with people not concerned with safety. A series of experiments will be conducted in order to address the implications of this shift in evaluative and stereotypical judgments and tie this research to several issues of social importance.
This project has the potential to transform thinking about stereotyping and motivation and the interplay between them. People must regularly confront threat. When certain social groups and their members are seen as threatening, people often react in a manner that is self-protective but is harmful to the members of that group and society more generally. This research will help us understand when and how people respond to groups that are seen as threats to safety and security. By understanding the underpinnings of support for public policies that serve to maintain safety and security, policy makers can establish effective policies while avoiding unintended negative social consequences that might arise in times of threat. Finally, this work includes female undergraduate students, as well as members of ethnic minority groups.
This project examined the conditions under which people might tend to utilize stereotypes that they typically might be motivated to avoid. We tested the hypothesis that people who are concerned with preserving a sense of safety (i.e., are prevention focussed) will show a willingness to use threat-relevant stereotypes in judgment, especially when danger is perceived to be psychologically close or imminent (physically close, large in magnitude, or close in time). People concerned with growth and advancement (i.e., are promotion focussed) were not expected to react similarly to perceived threat. Because information suggesting imminent danger is more relevant to the safety goals of prevention-focused individuals than the advancement goals of promotion-focused individuals, utilization of threat-relevant stereotypes was expected to increase under such conditions only under prevention focus. We found support for this general prediction in several different studies involving various stereotypes and social contexts. Using scenarios describing a violent crime committed by an African-American male and a petty crime committed by an undocumented immigrant, prevention-focused individuals made judgments consistent with stereotypes when threat was perceived to behigh rather than low. In studies that manipulated the stereotypicality of the target in a terrorism scenario, prevention-focused individuals were more likely to endorse scrutinizing a stereotypical compared with a non-stereotypical target when terrorism was described as an increasing problem. Subsequent studies extended this work into the domain of international affairs, examining how motivation interacts with perceived threat levels to influence evaluation of governmental responses to a potential threats from international actors. As predicted, individuals in a prevention focus advocated pre-emptive military action under high versus low threat; prevention motivation was unrelated to evaluations of economic sanctions or withdrawal of program support. In contrast, individuals in a promotion focus advocated the withdrawal of program support under high versus low threat; promotion motivation was unrelated to evaluations of economic sanctions or military action. These findings reveal how motivations affect how people perceive and act upon perceived threat across different social situations.
